Biography

As an undergraduate at Virginia (B.Sc., Mathematics & Cognitive Science, 1997), influenced by Chip Levy, I developed an interest in the mathematical and statistical foundations of emerging branches of the neural and cognitive sciences. I completed graduate study at Brown (M.Sc., Cognitive & Linguistic Sciences, 1999; Ph.D., Applied Mathematics, 2004), where I worked in the Pattern Theory group and wrote a dissertation under the supervision of Stuart Geman, on statistical topics in neurophysiology. Following a period of teaching mathematics at the University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, I completed my postdoctoral training in the laboratory of hippocampal neurophysiologist György Buzsáki at Rutgers. I joined the faculty at City College and the Graduate Center in 2010-11. Currently, my research interests span topics in statistics as well as neural coding and computation, with an emphasis on questions raised by large-scale neurophysiological measurements, and their implications for our understanding of the dynamics and functional properties of neuronal circuits.